09/11/2015 By Kelly Swanson, Do Public SpeakingLast updated on September 8, 2015

The Virtual Laugh Bar on Blab

Come join us at The Virtual Laugh Bar – where the comedy is served up clean and neat – shaken not stirred – and nobody has to drink alone. Sundays 7pm EST on Blab.

A New Dream Has Arrived- My Own Virtual Laugh Bar – Where the humor is served up clean and neat – shaken not stirred – and nobody has to drink alone.

Two months ago, I had never heard of Blab (www.blab.im). Shoot, two months ago nobody had heard of Blab. It’s this rocking super cool online platform that lets you hold four online video conversations at once – while your viewers get to mix and mingle on the side and have their own fun additions to the conversation – while you can swap people in and out of the video as often as you wish. Highly interactive. Highly fun. Highly cool. And catching on like wildfire.

I was part of a blab conversation with my dear friend and fellow speaker Laurie Guest (www.solutionsarebrewing.com). Laurie is VERY funny. And when you put the two of us together. Well, it just gets funnier. People throughout the blab were commenting about how funny we were and how they loved listening to us. As soon as the blab ended, I had an idea.

“Let’s do a show together!” I told Laurie. “Just you and me. Bantering and dishing about life. No business advice. No motivation. Just hanging out and laughing together. You and me and some random guests.” She instantly agreed. So while it sounded scary and over-the-top (we were committing out of the gate to host a show every week) it just felt right. We didn’t go seeking advice or asking others what they thought. We just jumped. I figured I had nothing to lose and whole LOT to gain by jumping into this Blab thing early.

Yes, I had the doubts and the fears that went something like this:

What if you’re not funny enough?

What if you have technical issues?

What if nobody signs up?

What if nobody listens?

What if the comments are awful?

What if we get weird people in the video seat?

Will this hurt my brand or help it?

What if we spend a lot of time and energy and it doesn’t work out?

What if….what if….what if….

And I came to the conclusion that I often come to when faced with a new dream – if it doesn’t cost me a lot of money and doesn’t tank my career or hurt my brand – why not? So we jumped.

We scheduled our first show for SIX DAYS LATER! Gulp. Nothing like acting fast! But we knew we had to act fast. Sometimes you have to move without waiting to figure it all out. We came up with a cool name: The Virtual Laugh Bar. And we came up with some cool ideas on how to brand and host the show.

Then I went an made a demo video to tell people about it. Here is the demo:

Then I started telling all my followers (on LinkedIn, Facebook, Google Plus, and Twitter) about it. People started to subscribe to the show. It was pretty exciting. And still very scary.

Show Time!

Laurie and I did a lot of planning for this show. It was all new to us, and Blab was still in the Beta Testing phase, so all the kinks had not been ironed out yet. So we did what we could to plan, figured out back up options if things went wrong, and discussed our roles for the show.

I was VERY nervous. This was a new platform for me. Totally off script. Gulp.

Here is the video of our pilot show. As you can tell, we had some technical issues. Everything did not go according to plan, even though we didn’t have a plan. But we had over 400 viewers – as of the writing of this post – the replays are available forever. When you get some time to settle in and watch, I would appreciate it. I think it’s pretty funny. Not bad for the first episode. And now I know how to make it even BETTER. I’m so excited about this new dream. It was something I didn’t see coming. And aren’t those the best kind!

Motivational Speaker Kelly Swanson is an award-winning storyteller,
author, and comedian who teaches you how to harness the power of your story to connect, engage, and get results. In this blog, Kelly focuses on the business of professional speaking. Kelly’s post day is Friday. If you aren't sure how to comment on this story,
click here.